Lowercase: square dot over the letter i; double-storey a. Wide, open apertures on letters such as a, e and s.

Uppercase: the tail of the capital Q is centered under the figure; the uppercase J has a slight hook; and there are two versions of the uppercase R, one with a straight tail and one with a curved tail.

Frutiger is a sans-serif typeface by the Swiss type designer Adrian Frutiger. It is the text version of Frutiger's earlier typeface Roissy, commissioned in 1970/71[1] by the newly built Charles de Gaulle Airport at Roissy, France, which needed a new directional sign system. Instead of using one of his previously designed typefaces like Univers, Frutiger chose to design a new one. The Roissy typeface was completed in 1972.[2] Impressed by the quality of the Roissy airport signage, the typographical director of the Mergenthaler Linotype Company approached Frutiger in 1974 to turn it into a typeface for print.[3]

In designing the typeface's predecessor Roissy, Frutiger's goal had been to create a sans-serif typeface with the rationality and cleanliness of Univers but the organic and proportional aspects of Gill Sans. Frutiger: "What was important, was total clarity – I would even call it nudity – an absence of any kind of artistic addition.".[4] Designing Frutiger as a print version of Roissy, this principle resulted in a distinctive and legible typeface. The letter properties originally suited to the needs of Charles de Gaulle: a modern appearance and legibility at various angles, sizes, and distances. Ascenders and descenders are very prominent, and apertures are wide to easily distinguish letters from one another.

This is a version of the original Frutiger font family licensed to Microsoft. This family consists of Frutiger 55, 56, 65, and 66. It does not include OpenType features or kerning, but it adds support to Latin Extended-B and Greek characters, with Frutiger 55 supporting extra IPA characters and spacing modifier letters. Unlike most Frutiger variants, Frutiger Linotype features old-style figures as the default numeral style.

Frutiger Linotype can be found in Microsoft products featuring Microsoft Reader and in the standalone Microsoft Reader package.

This is a variant of Frutiger used by Swiss authorities as the new font for traffic signs, replacing VSS in 2003.[6] It is based on Frutiger 57 Condensed, but with widening ascenders and descenders, which are intended to give the eye a better hold than the earlier version did.

A family of two fonts were made, called ASTRA-Frutiger-Standard/standard and ASTRA-Frutiger-Autobahn/autoroute.

The Frutiger family was updated in 1997 for signage at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. The new version, Frutiger Next, changed a number of details and added a true italic style in place of the oblique roman of the original.

This is an expanded version of Frutiger Next W1G. It added Greek (from Frutiger Next Greek) and Cyrillic character sets, but advertised OpenType features were reduced to superscript and subscript. Only an OpenType version has been produced.

This is a family of casual fonts inspired by natural elements. Using polished pebbles as the boundary, the family consists of regular, positive, and negative fonts. Frutiger Stones Positive is Regular without the stone outline, while Negative is a reverse fill of the Regular.

This is a family of casual fonts that consists of regular, outline, and signs fonts. Frutiger Capitalis Outline is the outline version of Frutiger Capitalis Regular. Frutiger Capitalis contains ornamental glyphs of religions, hand signs, and astrological signs.

This is a font family designed by Lebanese designer Nadine Chahine as a companion to Frutiger in consultation with Adrian Frutiger. It is based on the Kufi style but incorporates aspects of Ruqaa and Naskh in the letter form designs, resulting in what Linotype called "humanist Kufi". The fonts consist of Basic Latin and ISO-Latin characters derived from the original Frutiger family, with Arabic characters supporting presentation forms A and B. Four font weights were produced.

This is a serif font family designed by Adrian Frutiger and Akira Kobayashi. It is a re-envisioning of the metal type version of Meridien, a typeface first released by Deberny & Peignot during the 1950s.

The family consists of roman and italic fonts in five weights and two widths each.

This is an expanded version of the original Frutiger family designed by Adrian Frutiger and Akira Kobayashi. Unlike the original family, the Frutiger numbering scheme is not used.

Initial release of the family has 20 fonts in 10 weights and 1 width, with a complimentary oblique. It supports ISO Adobe, Adobe CE, and Latin Extended characters. OpenType features include subscript and superscript.

On April 7, 2010, Monotype Imaging Holdings announced condensed versions of the Neue Frutiger fonts. Designed by Akira Kobayashi, the expansion of the family includes 20 fonts in the same weight and style combination as the original release, in OpenType Pro font format.[7][8]

Adobe's Myriad and Microsoft's Segoe UI are two prominent typefaces whose similarities to Frutiger have aroused controversy. However, in an interview, Adrian Frutiger commended the work of Myriad's designer, Robert Slimbach: "except the unnecessary doubt concerning Myriad, his work is also very good."[11] Additionally, the Italic style of Myriad is cursive, while the original version of Frutiger uses a slanted Roman style rather than a true Italic.

CityRail (Rail operator in Sydney, Australia) uses Frutiger for railway station signs in Sydney and across their network, however it is now being superseded after the city's transport network rebranding.

URENCO Group, a nuclear fuel company operating several uranium enrichment plants in Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States, uses Frutiger as its official typeface for all marketing materials.

Michael Bierut commented on its common use in signs where a highly readable but friendly font is required: "Frutiger has been used so much for signage programs in hospitals and airports that seeing it now makes me feel that I'm about to get diagnosed with a brain tumor or miss the 7:00 to O'Hare."[42]